46 Ohio App. 39 - Nelson v. Minton, Exr.’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““Courts cannot interpolate words or phrases into a will. To do so is to write what the testatrix has not written. It is the written will that the court must construe. “While courts will avoid intestacy, if possible, the desire to do so cannot prevent a lapse where words constituting testate disposition are lacking. “Now in this case the testatrix knew the devisees in question were dead when she signed the will. She also is presumed to know that devises to them lapsed and were void. What was her intention in naming them? A mere gesture in the direction of an equal distribution between her own and her husband’s relatives? An intent to give a group distribution with a taking by the survivors? A per stirpes distribution? Any one of these or other suggestions can at best be but opinions, guesses, one as good as the other.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. McCallum v. Grantham